On-demand pharmacy delivery startups are seeing heightened interest from early-stage investors on the back of the vertical's huge potential in India's growing healthcare e-market.

After ventures like Netmeds, 1MG (formerly HealthKartPlus) and Phaneesh Murthy-led Zigy, among others, received initial capital, Bangalore-based Myra has raised its series A round from venture fund Matrix Partners, sources close to the matter said.

Entrepreneur angels Pranay Chulet, co-founder of Quikr, and Prashant Malik, co-founder of LimeRoad, are also backing the company, people familiar with the development said on the condition of anonymity.

As many as 60 online pharmacy delivery startups have mushroomed over the past two years in India, according to startup data collector Tracxn, but most of them haven't reached the scale of other online vertical plays like food, furniture and grocery e-commerce.

Pharmacy retail is estimated to be a $7-billion market dominated by the brick-and-mortar drug retailers.

Online deliveries currently account for a meagre $10 million in size. But with adoption of e-commerce among Indian consumers and rising spends on healthcare, this category is likely to grow. What may be a challenge for many of these companies is to wade through a highly regulated and licensed pharma industry, which many say is ripe for disruption.

In India, medicines can be sold only by a registered pharmacy with a retail licence. Which is why most of these startups are marketplaces or even if they have inventory, final deliveries from the warehouses are made by registered pharmacy stores after procurement of medicines.

When contacted by TOI, Faizan Aziz, co-founder & CEO of Myra, did not confirm the news of the financing round. However, he said their biggest differentiation came from the use of data science, technology and guaranteed delivery time of 30 minutes or less.

"We are able to track inventory with a lot more accuracy. Better tracking leads to improved analysis which enhances our prediction. This means better fill rates, helping us deliver to the customers in a timely manner," Aziz said.

Myra Medicines was founded in April last year by Aziz and Anirudh Coontoor. It owns two warehouses in Bengaluru for stocking medicines following the full-stack model.

Other players like 1MG work on a pure marketplace platform where they do not own any inventory but only connect the drug retailers with customers via their portal.

Atit Jain, CEO and co-founder, Pluss App, an online drugstore which scooped up funds led by IDG Ventures, said medicines as a segment is larger compared to the market for mobile phones.

"This is a huge opportunity and this problem cannot be solved by the typical e-commerce companies because there are over a lakh stock-keeping units, along with it being a regulated space," he said. Pluss claims to have registered sixfold growth in number of orders at 1,000 a day, with average ticket size being Rs 400-650 and commission in the 15-20% range.